On October 11, the Fourth Circuit agreed with the U.S. District Court that the Bread & Roses Party should not be on the Maryland ballot next month for U.S. Senate. Its only nominee, Jerome Segal, had run in the Democratic primary this year so the state’s “sore loser” law precluded his running again in November. Here is the two-page opinion. Thanks to Steve Kamp for this news.
Form JUNK op –
fill in names and dates.
Why shouldn’t he be allowed on the ballot? I’d love to see someone challenge the constitutionality of “sore loser” laws. They’re government policy designed to favor the major parties at the expense of minor parties and independents. How is that kind of preference permissible?
And how is it permissible to have one set of rules about nominations for Republicans and Democrats and another set for everyone else?
What was most disappointing about the 4th Circuit decision is that there was no justification or explanation provided by the Court for its ruling; this despite 50 pages of careful argumentation about what was wrong with the District Court decision.
In particular we maintained that a prior case upholding the Constitutionality of a similar statute did not have precedential value if in the prior case the statute was not subject to a strict scrutiny review, but such review is required in the current case. We pointed out that otherwise the Constitutionality of applications of a sore loser statute when rights were only lightly burdened would determine cases where they were heavily burdened, this despite Supreme Court ruling establishing a showing of necessity when there was heavy burdening.
This was at the center of the case as the District Court relied totally on one case, a case in which rights were lightly burdened and a strict review was not required. The District Court made no effort to evaluate our claim of heavy burdening; not did the Appeals Court.
That this issue of precedent was put before the Appeals Court, that they totally ignored it and did not provide a word of explanation, was truly shocking.
Each election is NEW.
Separate is NOT EQUAL.
Too many JUNK/MORON lawyers /judges to count since 1968
— esp. the super-HACK SCOTUS MORONS
— with the robotic lower court HACK morons just repeating SCOTUS JUNK.
The TOTAL R-O-T started with Lincoln’s SCOTUS HACKS in 1861.
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PR and AppV
Mr. Segal, will you be attempting to qualify for the 2020 election?